SDSreceived £0.5m in 14-15 to encourage
under-represented groups to take up an
MA.

CareerWISE received £125,000 for their
MA initiative to
raise the profile of
STEMMAs to
young women and parents.

Skills Development Scotland ran a number of pilot projects to
identify best practice that can be shared and replicated. These
pilots include:

Targeted projects looking to get more
care leavers into Modern Apprenticeships with
Who Cares Scotland, Action for Children Scotland, Barnardos and
Quarriers.

Work to encourage
more young women into constructionMAs with
industry representatives, supported by Equate.

A partnership project in West Lothian to encourage
women into
STEM
subjects.

Work with Barnardos, Remploy and training providers to
support
people with disabilities to take up and sustain
MA and
Employability Fund opportunities.

Projects with
BEMIS
and Rathbone to increase the participation of those from
Minority Ethnic groups.

Together with action to maximise the support offered to young
disabled students and care leavers in learning, the Scottish
Funding Council are working with Skills Development Scotland and
other key stakeholders to develop a plan to
address gender imbalance across further and higher
education.

Equality: Introduction

Developing the Talents of All Our Young People

One of the major challenges laid out in the Commission’s
report was the need to maximise the contribution of all our young
people in the world of work. In practice, that meant setting out
actions in the first instance to determine the barriers –
both real and perceived – that meant some training, education
and workplaces did not reflect the wide spectrum of young people in
Scotland. Throughout the first year of implementation we have drawn
on the expertise of a number of partners to take forward this
research and to build on the experience of some of our delivery
partners to promote training, education and jobs where the barriers
were ones of perception.

Our delivery partners Skills Development Scotland set out in
their
MA Equality Action
Plan a range of actions to promote more diversity in the
successful uptake of Modern Apprenticeship frameworks,
including:

Support young people with disabilities through transition
periods in their education and into employment.

Reduce gender stereotyping and gender segregation in career
choices and occupational routes chosen by young people in
education.

Broaden the range of career pathways taken by young people
from Scotland’s Minority Ethnic (
ME) communities.

Support young people in care and leaving care through
transition periods in their education and into employment.

SDS’s
actions have been developed in partnership with stakeholders and a
review of available evidence which highlights that many of the
factors affecting participation in
MAs reflect the
position and treatment of different groups within the labour market
and society as a whole. The plan further highlights the outcomes
and timescales set against each action along with a commitment to
update the plan on an annual basis.

Similarly, the Scottish Funding Council is developing a gender
action plan to address imbalance on college super courses and
university courses. Although not part of the remit of the report,
the
SFC has decided
to extend the ask of the recommendations to encompass university
provision, reflecting our view that this is about systemic change
across education and training.

We have invested £0.5m (2014-15) to Scottish Funding
Council to target gender imbalance in colleges as well as £3m
to Skills Development Scotland to deliver this range of targeted
activity. We recognise that we are addressing long standing
challenges in ensuring all young people have equal access to
education, training and employment. That is why we will continue to
review and refresh the equality milestones for the next six years
of the programme, reflecting the evolution of our strategy and
taking into account the findings of research and the input from
partners.

The challenge going forward will be to ensure that we prioritise
those young people who continue to face barriers in an improving
labour market, within a changing employability service and
apprenticeship landscape.

DELIVERY YEAR 1 – ACADEMIC YEAR 2014 –
2015

Milestone

Programme Progress

Detailed update

Initial equalities pilot action implemented, creating new
opportunities for those from currently underrepresented
groups

Completed and ongoing

Initial pilot activity ongoing in West Lothian. Marketing
planning for under-represented groups based on research
completed.

Progress So Far

During 2015 – we are already seeing:

Supported employment opportunities in the third sector
provided for care leavers and other groups of young people who
face significant barriers to employment;

Lead body identified to identify good practice in the
recruitment of young disabled people.

And in the remainder of 2015-16 we expect to
see:

Scottish Funding Council publishing their Gender Action Plan
in early 2016 focussing on addressing gender imbalances and plans
to address gender inequality more broadly working with Skills
Development Scotland and other partners;

Targeted Modern Apprenticeship campaign activity
developed.

During 2016 – 2017, we will see:

Secondary school inspection of active gender targeting in
relation to college based learning and foundation apprenticeships
begins;

Scottish Funding Council implementing their plan to reduce
gender imbalance on courses which they will report on
annually;

Achievement of Modern Apprenticeship volume target and
diversity targets.

During 2020 – 2021, we will see:

Expanded provision fully embedded within Curriculum for
Excellence, tested by Education Scotland, and valued by young
people, their parents and teachers and practitioners as evidenced
by uptake and outcomes;

College outcome agreements academic year 2021-22 reflect a
regional curriculum, with vocational options widely available,
informed by secondary schools, local authorities and
employers;

KPI 1 –
Be one of the top five performing countries in the
EU for youth unemployment
by reducing the relative ratio of youth unemployment to 25-64
unemployment to the level of the fifth best country in the
EU by 2021

KPI 2 - Be one
of the top five performing countries in the
EU for youth unemployment
by reducing the youth unemployment rate to match the fifth best
country in the
EU by 2021.

KPI 7 - To
reduce to 60 per cent the percentage of Modern Apprenticeship
frameworks where the gender balance is 75:25 or worse by 2021.

KPI 8 -
Increase by 5 percentage points the minority gender share in each
of the 10 largest and most imbalanced college superclasses by
2021.

KPI 9 -
Increase the number of
MA starts from
minority ethnic communities to equal the population share by
2021.

KPI 10 -
Increase the employment rate for young disabled people to the
population average by 2021.

KPI 11 -
Increase positive destinations for looked after children by 4
percentage points per annum resulting in parity by 2021.